On Historical Research

Historical investigation is a mental, logical exercise. Just like investigating a crime, it is scientific in nature. The investigator looks at the evidence and formulates a theory to explain it. In criminal investigation, evidence comprising of murder weapons, fingerprints, DNA residues, and other pertinent clues are fitted to the facts of the crime to help formulate a solution. These include the people involved, artifacts recovered, the environment of the scene, witness accounts, and other helpful hints. The reasonableness and plausibility of the solution are then submitted to twelve reasonable persons for adjudication, and the acceptability of the theory determined. Note that we can never verify the actuality of the premise because events that have passed can never be resurrected. Time travels in one direction only still because we have yet to realize H. G. Wells’ time machine in order to return to the scene of the crime to observe it in action. We can at best assess the likelihood of what might have happened. We may decide on the guilty of the accused, but we can never state for certain precisely how the crime was committed. History is assessed exactly the same way.

This investigative process is in fact rather straight forward, with the starting point being always the evidence. Of course, it is understood that the provenance of the evidence must first be established. Just because a piece of historical relic appears to be genuine, perhaps because it looks old, does not mean that it is in fact genuine, any more than an allegation should be accepted as fact just because an advocate believes in it. Historical artifacts are notorious in that they are frequently fabricated—forged. Not too long ago two young Israelis were caught manufacturing Biblical “finds,” one of them a coffin with Jesus’ brother’s name inscribed on it. In the nineteenth century a “lost” language called Tocharian was discovered in Chinese Turkestan. Later research on the language was drastically curtail when it was learned that much of the “artifacts” on which the ancient language was based were hand-crafted by a local artisan, made to satisfy the obvious enthusiasm exhibited by visiting Western researchers.

When a piece of evidence is confirmed to be authentic, the investigative process is then a matter of logical deduction. Let us illustrate the process by a simple example.

European cartographers used to render California as an island. The illustrations compiled above are a random compendium of maps by prominent mapmakers including John Speed, Johannes Vingboons, Pieter Goos, Nicholas Vissche, Frederic de Wit, Allain Mallet, Philip Cluver, and Nicolas DeFer, created between the early seventeenth century and early eighteenth century. We all know that California is not an island, and had not been an island within human consciousness. The challenge for the historical researcher is to explain this strange cartographic phenomenon. Why did post-Renaissance European mapmakers draw California as an island?

To answer this question, we need to first establish the facts. At the time when these maps were constructed, Europeans already had reached the Pacific and the west side of the Americas. However, Captain Vancouver had yet to survey Western Canada in late eighteenth century, therefore European knowledge of western North America was only superficial at the time of the California Island drawings. The conclusion from these facts is that European cartographers created their maps of California not based on first-hand survey results, but rather, on an unknown source or sources of information.

On close examination of these maps one can see that whereas the general shape of California is correct, pointing to some prototype mapping of the place created based on real survey data, each individual rendition is slightly different, incorporating unique readings of the geography that was unreal.

Take the portrayals by Pieter Goos and John Speed. These two Californias both had been amputated from the mainland. However, the surgical operations were clearly performed by different doctors using different cutting instruments: one smooth, one jagged. The maps were not simple copies of each other. How does one explain why these mapmakers decided to create phantom geography with such confidence, with the products being similar to each other yet individually unique? Based on what model did they find their inspirations? There is no direct answer to these questions, but there can be theories and conjectures. As Detective Tibbs, played by Sidney Poitier explained to the bigoted police chief played by Rod Steiger in the movie In the Heat of the Night as to why the accused could not have been guilty, “Sam could not have driven two cars at the same time!” One possible explanation is that a great deal of the information these cartographers got was in the form of descriptions as opposed to drawings. From the descriptions they then formulated their unique interpretations, resulting in slightly different shapes of California. It is also possible that they simply embellished their works; in other words, creating fiction.

In any case, if the Europeans had not created the prototype of these Californian islands, who did? Can we simply conclude that the medieval Chinese furnished the input? The facts at hand do not warrant such an inference. If we draw that conclusion now we would be remiss in violating our own strict standard of vigilance. To reach that conclusion, separate and independent evidence is necessary. As it is, fortunately, such evidence exists, and it can be found on medieval European maps. (This is fully explained in The 1421 Heresy.)

In verifying history, dates and timing are of the essence. After all, history is all about events in the past. The dating of a previous uncertain event or relic sometimes can alter the preconceived notion of an entire historical period. Ancient Egyptian history is still going through such upheavals. For our subject matter of medieval maritime enterprises, the case of the early fifteenth century (1411-15) Albertinus de Virga world map makes a fine example.

The de Virga map (see above) was purportedly drawn by a Venetian mapmaker a good thirty-five years before the Portuguese even reached the midway of West Africa for the first time in history, and some seventy to eighty years before Columbus set sail for the New World, and for da Gama to round the Cape of Good Hope. Certainly at the time of the map’s creation Europeans had not been to any place of significance outside Europe. Yet the de Virga map showed confidently the presence, therefore implying knowledge, of Africa and America, besides Asia and Northern Europe, as shown in the map image above.

We now have two facts working against each other: that Europeans should not have known of these places, yet they drew them. The job of the historian is to resolve this conflict by offering plausible theories of explanation. Obviously somebody had been to those places and mapped them, and the European cartographers—yes, there were other maps of the kind too—had access to that information. However, based on the map alone, again that is about all that one can infer. The map by itself is insufficient to conclude that the map prototype was of Chinese extract. That conclusion must be deduced from additional evidence. That is presented in the book The 1421 Heresy.

However, we can draw other conclusions from the map as it is. First, the existence of this map strongly suggests that such new information of the world was the true reason for the Portuguese going to sea, as opposed to the traditional (though now largely abandoned) view of the urge to search for a new sea route to the Asian spice islands, which, as a claim, despite its long standing assumption, actually lacks direct historical evidence of support. Second, the map circle in which the world’s major landmasses were framed indicates that whoever originated the map knew that the world was a globe. This is a reasonable conjecture, and it further supports the hypothesis that Europeans were not the first to draw maps by framing the world in a spherical projection. The only possibility that this theory can be wrong is that perhaps the creator of the map prototype, on which the de Virga map was based, was a European; one that had surveyed the entire world by the early 1400s, and yet was completely unknown to history. Therefore, anyone who professes that the spherical projection is a uniquely and exclusively European cartographic derivation is doing nothing but showing his ignorance of facts, and if this person actually attempts to dabble in the profession of history, he would be tantamount to committing malfeasance.

Dating is very important in historical research, which is why a person who certifies a coin with the inscription “minted in 6 BC” on it is ridiculed as an uninformed amateur. A person minting a coin in year 6 BC could not have known that the year was 6 BC.

Mischievous Chinese history teachers enjoy setting up the unsuspected with the trick question: “Was the First Emperor of Qin of Han Chinese extract?” This question often entraps even the most learned of historians. Expecting that the poser of the question is intimating that the Emperor might have been a foreigner, perhaps even a blond-haired, blued-eyed white man, the would-be stooge would almost invariably reply indignantly: “The First Emperor of Qin was most certainly of Han Chinese extract.” The term "Han Chinese" today generally refers to the majority of the Chinese ethnic population. The Han Dynasty, of course, came after the Qin Dynasty, and therefore the First Emperor of Qin could not possibly have been a Han.

Archeological relics and physical objects such as ancient human settlements and pyramids, burial sites, weaponry, tools, pottery, bronze castings, art, and the like, constitute hard evidence, and which are used to date historical events and support hypotheses. Besides hard evidence, we also can use soft evidence. Indeed, history is mostly based on soft evidence. Soft evidence is the historical record. Why are human records considered soft? It is primarily because they are words of people, and words can be unreliable, especially when influenced by political considerations. For example, it is well established as an academic principle that official historical reports often must be discounted somewhat unless they can be corroborated by secondary, independent witness accounts. This is because history can be manipulated; it is written by winners. Losers are customarily portrayed negatively in history.

Soft evidence, in turn, can be allocated into different grades. Official history is considered more reliable than folk history, which is often embellished. However, written folk history is more consistent than oral history, which is easily transmuted. These are then followed by legends which are usually modified from their historical basis to convey special biases, and finally, myths, which generally have lost their historical basis altogether.

If soft evidence is to be used, it should be corroborated by other, independent sources. Other than that, it can be used to confirm historical hypotheses when used prudently.

A case in point is the early sixteenth century Turkish book on navigation called the Bahriye, discovered in 1929 by Mr. Halil Edhem, director of the Topkapi Museum in Istanbul. In the book was an account describing how Christopher Columbus had explicit directions before he set sail for the Caribbean. Because of the independent way in which the long hidden information was discovered and the provenance of the document, this information, which contradicts accepted history, carries weight for the claim that Columbus followed predecessors in his historical voyages. It is hard to conceive of someone six hundred years ago concocting a false document just to confound readers from the twentieth century.

Regardless of whether it is hard or soft, evidence gains power if it has numbers on its side, whether there are multiple versions of it corroborating the same event, or that the event is intrinsically popular. Even so, sometimes a single piece of evidence can alter a complete version of accepted history. The discovery of a single ancient human bone fossil can move human history back millions of years.

In whatever case, whether it is hard evidence or soft evidence, strength in numbers helps. Often history is confirmed or accepted even if the evidence in support of it is indirect simply because of the amount of evidence in existence. The exception is popular opinion without scientific basis. In other words, just because people want certains things to be so does not make them facts. Conversely, historicity is seldom decided on a single factor, unless that factor is uniquely deterministic, the smoking gun, such as the human bone example given above. Thus, the authenticity of the recently discovered Chinese world map, while extremely important as far as the provenance of the map itself is concerned, has only passing and peripheral significance in the overall issue of the Ming Dynasty Chinese maritime circumnavigation of the world. It cannot by itself prove or disprove that such a historical event occurred. That is the responsibility of a complete body of evidence and arguments.

Similarly, a detractor aiming to shoot down a proposed theory needs to abide by the same rules. Remember that these are not artificially made rules. These are rules of logic; of reasoning. To deny a hypothesis one must demonstrate the fallacy in its logic, or reveal that the evidence on which the theory is based is flawed. However, the disproving process must be just as vigorous, rigorous, logical, and convincing as the proving process. If a proposal enjoys the backing of substantive evidence sets, the denial must invalidate the total set of arguments, not just a single piece of it. Here is a case in point.

Wife returns home after a weekend away at the in-laws to discover the husband drunk, the children in disheveled conditions, and the house in a general state of disarray. In a rage she rails into her husband, accusing him of spending the weekend watching football games. The husband retorts calmly that that was not true. He was not watching football games. He was watching basketball games. Soon the argument degenerates into a fight over the kind of ballgames the husband was indulging in. Such is the state of the current fuss over the historicity of the Ming Chinese maritime program.

Historical investigation is not a difficult procedure. What is difficult about it is the requisite knowledge one must possess in the analysis of the evidence, and the presence of a logical mind in performing the deduction. History is what the evidence points to. It has nothing to do with what one prefers to be his history or otherwise. Historical investigation is a clinical procedure. Unfortunately, all too often the frailty of the human nature interferes with the procedings. The most fundamental of this weakness is the personal bias of the researcher; that he prefers one historical scenario over another. In my book The 1421 Heresy I described how an anticipation of an undesirable outcome could lead a researcher to denying the veracity of evidence, willfully misinterpreting it, or even ignoring it. For instance, certain structures had been discovered underwater south of Japan in the Pacific that looked like they had been made by human. Some scholars deny that these structures even look like manmade simply because they dislike the implication.

In the current debate over the likelihood of the Ming Chinese circumnavigating the world and surveying it before the great European explorers, unprofessionalism has reached histrionic levels. Instead of focusing the discussion on the pertinent evidence and lines of reasoning, many participants in the discussion resort to hyperbole, misdirection, and even name-calling, the lowest form of scholarly behavior. Surprisingly, some of these ruffians are otherwise respectable members of reputable academic institutions. Thus, to them, California as an island is a purely European phenomenon, and the projection of the world into a globe is a European franchise style of mapmaking. They proclaim without the slightest hesitation or the least reference to evidentiary support, all the time sidestepping existing evidence that points to a different conclusion. If a Chinese map has features that look like European maps of today it is automatically concluded that the Chinese map was copied from European maps, even though the current research strongly suggests the reverse is true. By ignoring contrary research, including the present one, these critics have forfeited their credentials as authorities, and by stooping to what amounts to yelling matches, what the Americans call pissing contests, they have placed themselves in the same league as the medieval Inquisition, which condemned Galileo. History repeats itself.

April 8, 2006, Anatole Andro